Summary
Summary of Poems
Key ideas
Key idea 1
A poet keeps changing his voice
Across about fifty years, W. B. Yeats moves from dreamy songs of fairies and lost love toward blunt poems about war, politics, the body and death. His poems follow a mind that keeps changing rather than settling into a single way of seeing.
The early world of Irish legend gives way to love for Maud Gonne, the Easter Rising and visions of history moving in circles. Through these changes, the sound of the poems remains central: this is poetry meant to be heard.
Key idea 2
Dreams of escape carry sadness
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Key idea 3
Old legends carry personal wounds
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Key idea 4
Unreturned love changes with age
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Key idea 5
Public courage raises private doubts
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Key idea 6
Ageing sharpens the search for permanence
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Key idea 7
Sound and symbols keep moving
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Key idea 8
Beauty and doubt belong together
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The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
Read the rest freeWho it’s for
For readers who love sound and image, Irish myth and history, and poems about love, ageing and doubt.
What this book is
This is a gathering of poems by W. B. Yeats, the Irish poet who lived from 1865 to 1939. He wrote them over about fifty years, and they move from pale, dreamy songs of fairies and lost love to hard, public poems about war, politics and old age. In 1923 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and by then he was seen as the leading voice of Irish writing in English.
You will meet a poet who keeps changing his mind and his style. He begins in the misty world of Irish folk tales and legend. He ends with plain, blunt speech about the body, the nation and death. Along the way you find love poems for Maud Gonne, a woman he courted for years, poems about the Easter Rising, and strange visions of history that spin in great circles. Read in order, the poems show a mind at work, and they are meant to be heard. Let us begin with the young Yeats and the countryside that shaped him.
In this summary
- 1A young poet draws on Irish folkloreFree
- 2Myth and legend give him a language
- 3Love and longing for Maud Gonne
- 4Ireland, politics and the poet as citizen
- 5Gyres, ageing and the search for a lasting form
- 6Reading Yeats aloud, with his forms and symbols
Key point 1 of 6
A young poet draws on Irish folklore
Yeats was born in Dublin in 1865, but much of his childhood belonged to the west of Ireland, especially County Sligo. He heard stories there of fairies, ghosts and ancient heroes, and he never forgot them. His early poems turn those tales into songs. The land itself, its lakes, hills and sea, becomes a kind of character.
This early work is often grouped under the name Celtic Twilight, a phrase tied to the mood of a faded, dreamy Ireland. The poems are soft in sound. They use colours such as silver, grey and gold, and they speak of dusk, mist and water. The effect is like a half remembered dream.
Two poems from this period are loved by many readers. The Lake Isle of Innisfree imagines a small cabin on an island, with bees, a bean row and a deep peace. The Stolen Child is a ballad in which fairies call a child away from a troubled human world. Both poems show a longing to escape, and both are tinged with sadness, since the reader senses that the escape cannot last.
It helps to see that these poems are not simple nostalgia. Yeats was a young man living in London and Dublin, far from the places he praised. The distance is part of the feeling. When you read the early poems, listen for that gap between the world as it is and the world the poet wishes he could enter.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
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Check yourself
What does myth allow Yeats to do with personal pain?
Right. “Watch for how often a personal wound hides inside an old story, and how the old story makes the wound feel larger and more shared.”Not quite. “Watch for how often a personal wound hides inside an old story, and how the old story makes the wound feel larger and more shared.”
How does Yeats approach political commitment?
Right. “He admired courage and sacrifice, but he also saw how a cause can harden the heart.”Not quite. “He admired courage and sacrifice, but he also saw how a cause can harden the heart.”
What central question runs through Yeats's later poems about ageing and art?
Right. “They ask whether art can outlast the one who makes it.”Not quite. “They ask whether art can outlast the one who makes it.”
Questions about Poems
What are the poems of W. B. Yeats about?
They deal with love, Irish myth and folklore, politics and war, ageing, and the rise and fall of civilisations. His early poems are dreamy and musical, while his later poems are plainer, tougher and more personal.
Which Yeats poems should I read first?
Many readers start with The Lake Isle of Innisfree, When You Are Old and The Wild Swans at Coole. Then they try Easter, 1916, The Second Coming and Sailing to Byzantium to hear his later voice.
Who was Maud Gonne in Yeats's poetry?
She was an Irish nationalist and actress whom Yeats loved for many years. She refused to marry him. She appears, openly or by suggestion, in many of his love poems and in poems about Irish politics.
Is Yeats hard to read?
The early poems are easy to follow, with clear images and steady rhythm.
What does The Second Coming mean?
It is a short poem about a world sliding into chaos after the First World War. It pictures a violent new age arriving, using images of a falcon, a desert and a strange beast.
